Now, Hillary Clinton! No, wait… And now, Hillary Clinton! No, wait again…
January 28th, 2008, 12:02 pm · 1 Comment · posted by Paul Giblin
Hillary Clinton
There’s only one place where time moves slower than at the state Motor Vehicle Division. That’s at political campaign events.
Consider presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s conference call with Arizona reporters. It was scheduled to begin at 11:10 a.m. today, Jan. 28. When 11:10 rolled around, Clinton was not on the other end of the phone. Instead, chirpy ice-skating rink music played. And played. And played.At 11:30 a.m., a human voice that didn’t belong to the presidential candidate got on the line to announce that the call had been rescheduled for noon. That would have conflicted with a previously scheduled event at Democratic candidate Barack Obama’s Phoenix headquarters, but the start time for the Obama press conference already had been pushed back from noon to 3 p.m. Tuesday night’s rally for Clinton at Cesar Chavez High School in Laveen was another example of time moving in slow motion.
The New York senator initially was set to speak at 6 p.m., but the start time was rolled back to 7:30 p.m. throughout the day. No one at the rally had any serious expectations that 7:30 p.m. was any more firm than 6 p.m. had been. People packed in the school gym starting about 4 p.m., waved signs and grooved to chirpy pop and oldies rock music while they killed time waiting.At 8:08 p.m., the flag presentation began.
At 8:11 p.m., Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox and former Senate candidate Jim Pederson took the stage and set the mood. “Have you had enough of George Bush for the last eight years? Are you ready to make history and elect the first woman president?” Wilcox asked the crowd of 2,500 inside the gym and several thousand more in overflow areas. They left and the music restarted.
At 8:20 p.m., a campaign worker told the crowd how she met Clinton years earlier at the White House.
At 8:26 p.m., U.S. Rep. Ed Pastor’s wife spoke about her.
At 8:47 p.m., Cesar Chavez’s grandson and Clinton took the stage.
At 8:50 p.m., Chavez’s grandson led the group in prayer.
At 8:53 p.m., Clinton uttered her first words - nearly three hours after she was initially scheduled to speak.
Campaign insiders call it Political Standard Time.
Incidentially, while I was on hold waiting for the noon conference call to start, I gave this blog entry another edit. It’s now 12:19…
January 28th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
Well, when she came to Tennessee State after losing south carolina on Saturday she only started about 20 minutes late:
http://www.blackperspective.net/index.php/hillary-clinton-in-tennessee-after-south-carolina-defeat